Take the Solar Granulation Quiz!

Click on your choice for each question and press the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

Question 1
What is the temperature of a solar granule (bubble) compared to the dark intergranular network that surrounds the bubble? (See granulation pattern at top of page.)
Warmer
Cooler
Same

Hint(s):

Think about how the process of convection works.

Question 2
The lifetime of an average granule is:
About 20 hours.
About 10 minutes.
About 1 minute.

Hint(s):

Solar physicists can see solar granules created and destroyed during a typical observational session of the Sun.

Question 3
In the following list, what is the physical mechanism of solar granules most like?
A pot of bubbling fudge.
Ripples on a pond.
Coals in an outdoor barbeque.

Hint(s):

Think about how the process of convection works.
How about some kitchen science? Go home to your kitchen and try this Double Fudge Saucepan Brownie recipe or this Oatmeal Fudge Cookie recipe and pay attention to the bubbling fudge! (And then you can eat your reward.)

Question 4
Hot and bright solar granules are observed to "explode" and spew their material into the rarified solar atmosphere at a speed of perhaps 1000 miles per hour (or about 500 meters per second). Roughly what percentage of solar granules are "exploders"?
40 percent.
10 percent.
70 percent.

Hint(s):

A series of time-lapse images of the solar photosphere would show the granules to be in a constant state of eruptive motion, which indicates that the percentage of erupting granules is not small.

Question 5
If we could hear sound across the vacuum of space (which we can't), would we hear exploding granules?
No.
Yes.

Hint(s):

The answer points to one historical mechanism for heating the solar corona.
Jet engines have a similar mechanism.

Question 6
Select an object in size comparable to a solar granule:
A House.
The State of Texas.
Our Moon.

Hint(s):

You may click here for a picture of the answer, but that would be cheating.

Question 7
In the early 1960s, solar observations using dopplergrams found a cellular pattern distributed uniformly over the Sun with a mean cell size of about 30,000 kilometers. These large cell patterns are called supergranules. Is the flow direction of supergranules the same as the flow direction of granules?
Yes.
No.

Hint(s):

You may study this SOHO MDI movie (mpeg, 2 Mb) to learn the answer.
You may study this SOHO MDI image to learn the answer.

Question 8
The lifetime of an average supergranule is:
A day to a week.
About a month.
About six months.

Question 9
If you scale the following shapes to sub-solar-scales, what shape is most similar to the length-width-height shape of an average supergranule?
A cube.
A vertical support beam for a freeway overpass.
A pancake.

Would you like to learn more about solar granulation? You may read what some of the granulation researchers are discovering.

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Created by Amara Graps.
Last Modified by ALG on July 30 1997.